Omar Haroun

More great insights from Montauk Capital and Evan Caron on the extraordinary risks, and opportunities, at the intersection of energy and the real estate industry.

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🔥 Why We Built MVP — and the Power of Collective Investing When Elan Adler 🩻, Founder & CEO of OneImaging, asked why we decided to build MVP… the truth is simple: Working with Jason Parrott and Manny Menendez Menedez has been a blast 🙌 —and we’re constantly on the lookout for founders who drive real cost savings for employers. 💼💡 We raised $850K from 80+ investors across the digital health industry for Oneimaging. That collective support wasn’t just financial—it came with deep industry knowledge, intros, and strategic insight. 🤝📈 Our MVP members helped evaluate the opportunity and delivered incredible intel. 🧠✨ Watch Here: https://lnkd.in/d5AnVx8n Listen here: https://lnkd.in/ga_TNNnZ

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"My favorite CEO comes in, and the first ten minutes of the meeting is actually psychotherapy." We are excited to welcome Paul Martino, Managing Partner at Bullpen Capital, for Episode 2 of Charting the Course. A nine-time founder and veteran investor, Paul brings a unique perspective on the "post-seed" gap—backing founders who build in categories and geographies that others often ignore. To Paul, being misunderstood isn't an obstacle; it's often an early signal of opportunity. Full episode drops this Friday - follow to be notified. #ChartingTheCourse #VC #Startups

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"We've become so insular in who we talk to and listen to, and I didn't realize how much that was keeping me in tunnel vision and tunnel thinking." Seth Levine, Co-Author of Capital Evolution and Partner at Foundry, talks about seeking out more diversity of thought on Tech Scenes Unplugged. #venturebacked #vcbacked #venturecapital #leadership #ceo #founder #operatingsystem #peakOS #foundermode

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At Eniac Ventures we’re investing in companies built for a world of abundant intelligence. At the agentic layer, that means leaning into regulated industries like healthcare, government/defense, and financial services, where data friction is the moat, not the obstacle. The companies that will win here aren’t just building smart products. They’re willing to take on liability, to stand behind the output, own the outcome, and put skin in the game alongside their customers. At the tooling layer, it means things like security, privacy, and compliance. The model companies can’t be the ones solving this. You don’t grade your own homework. These need to be independent layers, and the need only grows as agents move deeper into mission critical environments. In the age of abundant intelligence, the hardest areas to build in will likely be where the most durable companies emerge.

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Another missive from Chuck Cotter and Daniel Faierman. Thanks guys for continuing to help to ecosystem. If you've not seen their posts, peek at https://lnkd.in/gPiu9Z4z. Topics include: · CPG Co-Manufacturing Contracts · Early Stage VC Terms to Rarely Accept · More Dividends (and Dividend Recaps?) · 5 Raises, 5 Takeaways · A Founder's Guide to Secondaries · Standing Out Pre-Traction · The State of VC · Corporate Governance 101 · Anti-Dilution Provisions · Primer on QSBS · 4 Fund Raising DON'Ts · Liquidation Preferences · Understanding SAFEs · Understanding Convertible Notes · Understanding Prorata Rights · Founders & Athletes · Employee Stock Options Demystified · The Art of Start-Up Valuation · What Is A Term Sheet Anyway? Check it out ...

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Las Vegas just proved it can build billion-dollar companies. But can we keep them here? The other night took the time to digest a new policy brief by Desert Forge Ventures Managing Partner Len Jessup and Analyst Fellow Sean C. for The Lincy Institute. The data is hard to ignore:  - Total startup valuation in the valley has climbed to 19 billion dollars in 2024. - Our unicorn creation rate sits at 1.65 per billion invested, roughly double the national average. Momentum is not the problem. Retention is! Too many promising teams raise early rounds in Nevada, then leave for deeper capital pools when Series B and beyond roll around. Jessup and Curry lay out a plan to change that. Just to name a few: - A state-backed Fund of Funds to expand local VC capacity.  - Targeted tax credits that reward angels who write Nevada checks.  - Incentives that make relocating a growth-stage company to Las Vegas a rational choice, not a gamble. Why does this matter? As an Analyst Fellow I spend my days sourcing deals and talking to founders who love the Vegas community but worry about their growth prospects here. Every time we lose one of those teams, we lose opportunities for high-paying jobs, cross-pollination, and a chance to diversify our economy. The brief gives policymakers a playbook. If you care about building a tech hub that rivals our peer cities across the mountain west, the details are well worth 20 minutes of your time. Full brief here:  https://lnkd.in/gweh_VCY

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Most founders treat warm intros like a nice-to-have. They think if the deck is strong enough, the right investor will notice. They’re wrong. Investors don’t have a filtering problem. They have a trust problem. Every week, they see hundreds of decks. Some great. Many decent. A few even brilliant. But that’s not the bar. The real question isn’t “Is this startup promising?” It’s “Do I trust this founder enough to take the call, stake my reputation, and possibly invest?” That’s what a warm intro solves. It reduces the trust gap. When a credible founder, respected operator, or trusted LP vouches for you, you’re no longer a stranger in someone’s inbox—you’re a filtered signal from someone they already believe in. • Without that credibility transfer, the burden of proof falls entirely on your deck. And no matter how strong it is, most investors won’t roll the dice if no one is standing behind it. But here’s the part most people miss: You don’t get warm intros. You earn them-long before you need them. Because warm intros aren’t just about access. They’re about shared experience, long-game relationships, and quiet reputational equity. The founders who raise well are the ones who tend the garden: They help others before asking for help. They’re kind when no one’s watching. They make time for feedback, referrals, second looks. They show up generously—and consistently. Fundraising isn’t a visibility game. It’s a credibility game. And credibility isn’t built in the room. It’s built over time. This post is a primer on that blind spot: What warm intros actually signal to investors. Why founder-to-founder intros beat cold outreach every time. How to turn a “no” into long-term trust. Why using brokers or “fundraising middlemen” almost always backfires. How to build a reputation that makes capital feel like a shared bet—not a leap of faith. If you want to raise smarter-and faster-understand this: Warm intros aren’t about playing favorites. They’re about reducing friction in a world where trust is scarce and time is shorter. And the best time to start building trust? Before you need it. #startups #fundraising #venturecapital #warmintros #founderlife #networking #trustdriven

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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Boards are supposed to help founders. Over the past 19 years, I've watched many trap them instead. As companies scale, many boards turn from insight to oversight and stop doing what founders actually need: Help making big, hard decisions. Early boards tend to be small, the board members are close to the business and highly invested in it. They argue from first principles. They help founders think. Later-stage boards often look more impressive on paper - they have more independent directors, committees and process. Somewhere along the way, collective problem solving gets replaced with oversight. The board shifts from helping the CEO make better decisions to monitoring decisions that have already been made. Strategy discussions get safer, real debate gets rarer and meetings become more about risk management than judgment. This usually coincides with the introduction of more professional board members. For better or worse, they often optimize for governance, optics, and liability management. That’s their job. But it’s not always what the company needs in moments of real uncertainty. Then, CEOs stop using them as thought partners. That’s a problem. So what should founders do? A few principles that help: • Keep the board as small as you can for as long as you can • Add directors for new insight they bring, not what boxes they check • Treat board seats like senior hires, not trophies • Design meetings for debate rather than reporting • Be explicit about when you want input vs approval Good boards should improve decision-making. If your board isn’t making you think harder, it’s probably not doing its job.

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Today is the due date of California’s Fair Investment Practices' first annual demographic report, and my team at Fabric VC is proud to report on our 100% diverse-led portfolio. 🎉 We look forward to seeing other funds like ours changing the paradigm in VC, and will be calling out those whose numbers look far different than ours to start making intentional choices to create a more diverse VC system. #FIPVCC

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Interesting tidbit from the Women in VC Summit at Half Moon Bay. You wouldn’t necessarily think Deep Tech / AI and Consumer investors have much in common—beyond being founder-first. But post-2021/2022, the convergence is real. Across stages and sectors, the shift is toward: • Disciplined unit economics • Proof over possibility Whether it’s consumer or deep tech, the bar has moved from credible possibility to credible execution (credit to deep tech investor Kelly Chen for the phrasing). What that looks like in practice: - Deep Tech diligence → customer calls, pilots, real demand pull - Consumer diligence → channel checks, repeat purchase, retail velocity Different inputs. Same question: does the product actually work? The punchline for founders: everyone is underwriting outcomes now—not narratives. #WomenInVC #VentureCapital #Fundraising #UnitEconomics #StartupExecution #DeepTech #ConsumerVC

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Most startup advice is either too abstract to act on, or written for companies already at Series A and beyond. If you're thinking about starting something, or you've founded a company and are pre-product market fit, the most tactical thinking I've come across is from Rob Snyder: https://lnkd.in/epaFS3RP Rob gives founders concrete frameworks for closing early customers and bringing a company to market. His focus on understanding demand and distribution before supply draws from lineages I've also learned from directly, Bobby Moesta and Clay Christensen. This is unprompted. I've been learning from Rob for years, and it felt right to send people his way.

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Thrilled to share the launch of Criticality, a $65M fund built to back founders solving hard, high-leverage problems at the intersection of technical complexity and real-world urgency. Criticality builds on the foundation we’ve laid at Antler - applying our conviction-driven approach to companies at Seed & Series A. The fund is sector-flexible but applies a deep tech lens to each opportunity, targeting non-obvious, high-leverage problems from the earliest stages of company formation. Grateful to the New Mexico State Investment Council for their support in anchoring Criticality. More to come soon from Cash Allred & I.

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Had a 30-minute masterclass on real estate investing with Riaz Taplin, founder and CEO of ArtHaus Partners (formerly Riaz Capital), a workforce housing developer in the Bay Area. 🤓 Their platform is valued at around $1B with $325M - $350M in investor capital raised. Under his leadership, the company expanded from 88 units to 4,000 units, residences, and beds in operation and development. He started young— at 16, and professionally by 21. With 20+ years in the game, he’s mastered how to read the market and create opportunities that help investors maximize and protect their capital. Interesting how their platform delivers twofold value. 1/ Bridge the Bay Area’s middle-class housing gap. 2/ Deliver steady, tax-advantaged returns for investors. Other things I learned from our convo: ↳ Going solo in real estate = betting everything on one property. You miss out on diversified, steady gains from scale and expertise. ↳ Calling real estate a disaster = missing the nuance. Some classes, like multifamily housing, stay strong even when others crash. ↳ Investing without a tax strategy = giving away returns. Take advantage of tax provisions such as a 1031 exchange. Huge thank you to Riaz for sharing his wisdom! 💚 We talked about how to read markets, scale without overexposure, create impact while building wealth, and more! If you’d like to catch the full conversation, I'll drop the link in the comments. 👇 And please send some love to Riaz. He’s doing incredible work bridging the Bay Area’s middle-class housing gap while helping investors grow sustainably. 🦁🚀

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Welcome back to #MathMonday. It's pretty clear to us at Veteran Ventures Capital that we're back in conflicts of attrition—something many of us thought was buried in the dustbin of history after the "precision" war against #Iraq in 1991. Two things drove that home this weekend. 1. The exchange rate is breaking #math. Robert #Magyar Brovdi, Commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, recently put a price tag on the new way of war: roughly $878 in matériel to kill a single Russian soldier. The exchange ratio is a staggering 400 Russians lost for every one Ukrainian (according to Brovid). Drones now account for 70–80% of all battlefield casualties on that front, and FPVs alone struck 33,019 Russian troops in December 2025—the first month verified Russian losses from Ukrainian drones exceeded Russian recruitment. Some context on how unprecedented those numbers are: - #WWII U.S. Army Ordnance estimates: ~25,000–50,000 small-arms rounds per enemy combatant killed. - #Vietnam: cited figures climbed past 200,000 rounds per kill. - #British heavy AAA early in the V-1 campaign: roughly 2,500 shells per rocket downed—before the proximity fuze collapsed that ratio to around 100. The cost-per-casualty curve has been bending the wrong way for eight decades. #Ukraine just bent it back—violently. That's why it's a good thing the U.S. is sending more soldiers into Ukraine to learn from them firsthand. 2. Even the "losses" are wins. Ukrainian milbloggers have begun counting it as a kill when an FPV is destroyed by an incoming missile—on the logic that both pieces of hardware are gone, and the exchange still favors them. Makes sense when the Russians have to expend a $100K missile to take down a $1K drone. They're right, and the self-reflection of that math is sobering. We're firing $3M+ Patriot PAC-3 interceptors at $35K Shaheds, resulting in us running a ~100-to-1 deficit—and the Middle East burned through 800+ PAC-3 MSEs in three days in last year's engagement. Unknown what a good unclassified estimate for the current conflict, but it's a big number. Two takeaways: 1) As I've said often, the old adage needs an update. "Amateurs talk tactics, experts talk logistics" should now read: Amateurs talk war, experts talk supply chain. Ukraine is producing over 8 million FPVs per year. Russia claims up to 19,000 drones per day. Whoever scales their factories—and protects them—wins. 2) Cheap defense at single-digit percentages of offense cost is a brand-new kind of deterrent. Being on the wrong side of the cost curve may look good in the short term, but it's really a depletion race to the bottom of your own checkbook. The strategists, operators and investors who internalize this shift first will own the next decade of defense. #MathMonday #VeteranVenturesCapital #DefenseTech #DroneWarfare #AsymmetricWarfare #DefenseInvesting #NationalSecurity #FutureOfWarfare #MilitaryInnovation #SupplyChain

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Here's a transition we see go sideways all the time: successful services business. Revenue, team, domain expertise. The next step feels obvious -- start building ventures on that foundation. In theory, elegant. In practice, one of the hardest transitions in the studio world. The core problem is that costs and benefits land in the same place. The services team builds client work (pays bills now) and internal ventures (might pay in three years). When an outside investor looks at this, the question is immediate: how do I know the best people are on my ventures and not client projects? That's not a trust problem. It's an incentive alignment problem. 📉 We've seen the same diagnosis play out repeatedly. Venture builders and service providers share the same entity, the same P&L, the same team allocation. Ventures always lose this configuration because revenue-generating work always wins the resource fight. Cleanest solution: distinct entities, distinct teams, distinct reporting. Services business funds operations. Studio entity houses ventures. Shared thesis, separate P&L. If full separation isn't possible yet, raise per venture through SPVs. Build proof points one at a time. 🎯 Here's the takeaway -- the earn-to-own path is valid. But the operators who succeed plan for structural separation from day one. They don't assume services and studio can coexist in one body indefinitely. The ones who wait to separate usually never do. ⚡

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Two weeks ago on Swimming with Allocators, we sat down with David Clark, CIO at VenCap, to talk about what decades of venture data can teach allocators. One takeaway that stood out: discounts don’t matter as much as people think in venture secondaries. Because venture is such a power-law asset class, outcomes are driven by exposure to a few massive winners. Whether a stake is bought at a small discount, or even a premium, often matters far less than the quality of the underlying company and its upside. Great conversation on venture returns, manager selection, and the nuances of how allocators should think about secondary investments. 👇 Link in the comments.

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What is a "buyer-builder"? It's the founder archetype we back at Daring Ventures. Buyer-builders have lived experience and domain expertise on the industries they are building in. They've felt the friction and know which problems to address and who to build for. They don't need to do customer discovery because they've experienced it first-hand. Outsiders spend years and millions figuring out what buyer-builders already know. We started The Builders Series to profile the ones doing it right. This edition: Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan of ServiceTitan. Ara and Vahe did not need to be told that contractors were underserved. They grew up watching it. Their fathers, competent skilled operators, losing hours every week to paper invoices, missed calls, and work that software should have absorbed years earlier. Full piece on Forward This 👇

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